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“How did you come by it?” She peered to her lap and gathered more ointment, the more the better as far as she was concerned.
“When I was a boy. Someone clobbered me.”
Frowning, she glanced up, his broad back and shoulders confronting her like Hadrian’s Wall – unconquerable and defiant. She recalled mention of his childhood, a brutal place where fists ruled. “Was…was your father violent?”
His face slanted to profile, scarred eyebrow raised. “Shall I tell you of my father?”
“Well, if you do not mind.” She tentatively smiled. “I would like to know more of your past, Seth.”
He rubbed a hand upon his chin, the rasp of stubble so very loud in the silence of the evening. Even the clock hands had paused at a half after the hour, it’s owner too distracted to have wound it.
“The Rookery’s a tough place, Matilda, where a boy can have all compassion trampled out of him before he reaches manhood.” He lifted his chin. “But I grew up with a father who made sure that never happened, who although had the body of a brute, had the soul of a saint. One who loathed violence, any kind of violence against man, woman or beast.”
“A gentle man, then?”
“Yes, and the very epitome of the word gentleman.” He stretched his legs. “Honest and dependable. If a child went missing in our street, he’d be the first one out hunting and the last to come home. He’d toil till midnight and beyond if our bellies were empty, and I recall him shovelling manure, just to afford daisies for Mother’s birthday.” With a twist of torso, Seth grinned. “Many a lad down our street had a father too handy with his fists. But not mine. Built like a brick privy but with hands that could cradle a new-born kitten.”
She smiled to herself. Like father, like son.
“So how did you receive the scar?” And she commenced smoothing the warmed ointment onto the outer edges of his wound.
“I told you Father was a coal heaver?”
“Yes, I remember.”
He rolled his shoulders, so Matilda slicked upwards and onto the swollen hoof mark, keeping her touch tender.
“Hell, that’s good,” he murmured, head tipping low. “’Tis a hard job, paying fifteen shillings a week, if you’re lucky, with the rest paid in ale as his employer was an innkeeper. I started helping when I was thirteen.”
Chloe’s age.
So young for Seth to lift such hefty sacks of cumbersome coal.
“But I found… You cannot imagine, Matilda,” he said, “how it feels when the man you love and adore, a father to be proud of, is beaten by another. By a fiend not worthy to lick his worn boots.”
With waxy palm aloft, she frowned. “Beaten? How awful. But why would someone beat him?”
“Father had dropped a coal sack, not surprising after a shift of ten hours, and it had split at the seams. So the innkeeper clobbered him – not a quick clip, mind, but brutal punches about the face and chest. He didn’t put up a fight, even though he could’ve laid the fiend low with a fist. It just wasn’t in him.”
Matilda scowled. “Your poor father. And what a bullying huff-cap.” Seth’s back rippled and she kneaded outwards, attempting to keep all fury from her touch.
“Mother and I had seen bruises on him before, but he’d always scoffed it was the hundredweight coal sacks or that he’d fallen.” Seth breathed deep. “I raged, asked him why he didn’t fight back or find other work, but he said employment was scarce as hen’s teeth, and what was better? A few bruises? Or no food on the table? All of us on the streets or in the workhouse?” He twisted, her fingers falling. “How would you have felt, Matilda, if you’d been me as a lad?”
Her eyes slitted, lips flattened. “Angry. I feel angry now.”
Seth nodded, gaze fixed to hers. “Then one day, it was my turn for a beating, and the innkeeper clobbered me about the head – fierce and painful. But I fought back…” He snorted. “I knew nothing, not even how to punch, and he smacked me so hard I crashed into a shelf of bottles, and glass embedded itself in my eyebrow. I could’ve been blinded.”
Fury gushed through Matilda, that such a vicious tyrant would not only abuse Seth’s hard-working father but also a mere boy, and she jerkily reached out to stroke his eyebrow. “Yet your family was reliant upon the wage.”
His lips thinned as he cast a nod. “Yet I also knew it would never stop. For the first time, I could see my own life stretching ahead of me, violent and short, of watching my father beaten down like a dog till one day the punch would hit him wrong and he’d never rise.”
She scrunched her fingers in the brandy-soaked linen, tearing the material in her wrath. “So you turned that anger to resolve and began prizefighting?”
“Exactly so. I had my mother’s pluck combined with my father’s build, and it’s not unusual in the coal trade. Same with butchers, bargemen and heavers – they all have a go, but most only use their brawn. I knew if I had any chance, I needed more. So I began sneaking into fights at Five Courts, where they do demonstrations and benefits for retired fighters. I’d watch the champions – their technique and stance.”
“And you started winning?”
Seth smirked. “Losing, more like… but learning each time my arse hit the floor, then finally winning. Only for coppers in the early years as I was so young. Hell, Father couldn’t bear to watch, but Mother would cheer me on. Her language, you’d not believe it…” He chuckled, deep and strong, and Matilda marvelled at his steely determination. Driven to fight by circumstance and yet, like his father, never violent in nature.
